Parked EVs Are Now Europe's Newest Power Plants

Volkswagen and Elli launch V2G in Germany, letting fleet EVs trade grid energy and earn up to €900 a year

12 May 2026

From the final quarter of 2026, the German carmaker and its energy arm, Elli, will allow drivers to sell electricity from parked vehicles back into the grid. Owners of enrolled cars could earn as much as €900 a year, provided they are willing to let Elli trade their battery capacity on wholesale power markets.

The idea behind vehicle-to-grid, or V2G, has existed for years. The obstacle was not technical. Volkswagen’s ID. range has supported bidirectional charging since 2023. The problem was regulation. Germany only removed key barriers to commercial deployment in late 2025, after years of hesitation over metering rules and grid participation.

That delay may now look costly. Europe’s electricity networks are becoming more dependent on intermittent renewable power, while electric vehicles are multiplying rapidly. A parked battery is no longer just idle hardware. It is flexible storage.

Elli aims to turn thousands of connected cars into a virtual power plant. The company already trades electricity on the EPEX Spot exchange and operates stationary storage facilities in Salzgitter. Adding vehicle batteries gives it access to a much larger and more distributed reserve of power. Smart-meter installations are expected within eight to ten weeks of registration opening in June.

For fleet operators, the sums are especially attractive. Delivery vans, utility vehicles and light commercial fleets tend to remain parked overnight while still connected to chargers. That makes them more valuable to electricity traders than privately owned cars, which move unpredictably. Revenue from energy trading could offset part of the higher upfront cost of electrification, altering fleet economics in ways subsidies alone have struggled to achieve.

Others are moving quickly. BMW is developing a similar programme with E.ON, while Ford has partnered with Octopus Energy in Britain. Europe’s carmakers once competed over horsepower. Increasingly, they are competing over who controls the battery after the driver leaves the vehicle behind.

The wider question is whether electricity markets are ready for millions of small traders disguised as cars. Grid operators may welcome the flexibility. Regulators, as usual, will worry about what happens when too many batteries decide to sell power at once.